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Updates on Affiliation Switch from CBS News Radio Closure.
- Thread starter oldvnewschool
- Start date
NPR had something about the end of CBS Radio. I thought the audio might have been from the final newscast but there were several clips that obviously weren't that.
At 10 am (Mountain time), KIVA Albuquerque went to "The Worldwide News Network".
KTRH switched to ABC Information on April 4, 1987. CBS then went to KPRC, but that didn't happen until February 15, 1988. A newspaper report at the time indicated that there apparently was some confusion among listeners thinking that KTRH would also pick ABC Talknet programming that had been airing in the evenings on KPRC. KTRH also claimed that ABC's approach to reporting was more aggressive than CBS's and more in line with a "news first" image that KTRH wanted to project. I will reserve comment on that claim.
It looks like KPRC was still a CBS affiliate in 2014 but I can't quickly find affiliation information for the years after that.
Here is a "eulogy" to CBS Radio News:
barrettmedia.com
The writer has an interesting perspective. He seems to want an integrated system where radio is part of the larger media choices available from a company. In fact what he is talking about existed at the CBS O&Os up until the moment that CBS sold its radio stations. They had an integrated system based at their station websites that combined TV, radio, and online.
It was a pretty good system, but it only applied to the O&O stations, not the national network. So when the radio stations were sold ten years ago, the system was disrupted, and the TV stations and radio stations each became their own things.
Each of the TV networks have struggled with this same situation. NBC sold off its radio stations and radio network in 1988. The TV company recognized there was some value in keeping an association with radio, even though it didn't own it anymore. They continue to support the NBC News brand on radio through iHeart.
Fox News owns a radio service that offers both short form newscasts and long form talk shows. CBS could have done that, but the only talk show I'm aware of was John Batchelor. ABC offers prep services for music stations and online content. Those were areas that CBS News could have entered but didn't. They tried doing long form programming when they were distributed by SkyView. But apparently there weren't enough stations to make it viable.
That's the problem facing radio now. When you don't own radio stations, you can't force them to carry your programming. The marketplace for radio content is very competitive. It costs money to compete. CBS decided it wasn't worth spending the money.
Saying Farewell: The CBS News Radio Eulogy
Here's the hard truth: CBS News Radio didn't die of natural causes. It died of malpractice. A fundamental misunderstanding of its value — and its role in the greater media ecosystem — is what killed it.
barrettmedia.com
The writer has an interesting perspective. He seems to want an integrated system where radio is part of the larger media choices available from a company. In fact what he is talking about existed at the CBS O&Os up until the moment that CBS sold its radio stations. They had an integrated system based at their station websites that combined TV, radio, and online.
It was a pretty good system, but it only applied to the O&O stations, not the national network. So when the radio stations were sold ten years ago, the system was disrupted, and the TV stations and radio stations each became their own things.
Each of the TV networks have struggled with this same situation. NBC sold off its radio stations and radio network in 1988. The TV company recognized there was some value in keeping an association with radio, even though it didn't own it anymore. They continue to support the NBC News brand on radio through iHeart.
Fox News owns a radio service that offers both short form newscasts and long form talk shows. CBS could have done that, but the only talk show I'm aware of was John Batchelor. ABC offers prep services for music stations and online content. Those were areas that CBS News could have entered but didn't. They tried doing long form programming when they were distributed by SkyView. But apparently there weren't enough stations to make it viable.
That's the problem facing radio now. When you don't own radio stations, you can't force them to carry your programming. The marketplace for radio content is very competitive. It costs money to compete. CBS decided it wasn't worth spending the money.
Very shocked that a station like this ran CBS News. They're a satellite conservative talk station. WNN should fit right in.
Interesting column from the Champaign-Urbana (IL) News-Gazette about WDWS/Champaign, the area's longtime main full-service station, their history with news network affiliation, and their discussion about whether to switch from CBS to ABC or Fox: Records & Radio | With plug pulled on CBS News Radio, affiliate switch pending for WDWS
The oldies station I listen to that had CBS News only does two stories before the anchor says, "America is listening to Fox News" and then commercials, and back to music.
That's far from the strangest thing about radio in New Mexico.
"Everything proven by experience elsewhere fails in New Mexico." - Lew Wallace (a territorial governor)
That's true. What probably matters most for the station is to have something in the timeslots between syndicated talk-show segments. That's true for any station of that type, and may well be the thing that's keeping radio news networks at least somewhat viable.
Here is a "eulogy" to CBS Radio News:
Saying Farewell: The CBS News Radio Eulogy
Here's the hard truth: CBS News Radio didn't die of natural causes. It died of malpractice. A fundamental misunderstanding of its value — and its role in the greater media ecosystem — is what killed it.
The writer has an interesting perspective. He seems to want an integrated system where radio is part of the larger media choices available from a company. In fact what he is talking about existed at the CBS O&Os up until the moment that CBS sold its radio stations. They had an integrated system based at their station websites that combined TV, radio, and online.
It was a pretty good system, but it only applied to the O&O stations, not the national network. So when the radio stations were sold ten years ago, the system was disrupted, and the TV stations and radio stations each became their own things.
I've given some thought to this myself. I wasn't all that impressed with the commentary, which seemed to be another that went along the lines of "those damned beancounters".
I think the roots of the problem go way deeper. NBC and CBS had successful TV networks from the start. ABC was a straggler, and struggling. Radio became a smaller and smaller part of NBC's and CBS's operations. For ABC, radio was where they had some successes, and some true innovation, culminating in the 1968 "split" into four subnetworks. NBC and CBS didn't much feel the need to change in radio. ABC was changing quite a bit.
CBS's big radio innovation was the refinement of all-news radio at most of its O&O stations, also in the late 1960s. (To be fair, NBC tried networked all-news with NIS in the mid-1970s, but their timing was off.) I think what may have happened with CBS Radio was that it gradually shifted emphasis to be a service whose primary customer was the O&O stations. The features fed from the network were designed to fit into a news wheel. Longer-form programs wouldn't fit such a format for the most part. The CBS approach was also fine for full-service stations, but that customer base would start declining in the following decades and is now almost non-existent.
ABC started having some real success with TV in the latter half of the 1970s, but, by then, ABC radio had established a strong track record that it could build upon. It added a couple of subnets, and started the Talknet service. Its O&Os carried an ABC network, but ABC was also free to do business with other stations in a market. This led to new products and services as they had an up-to-date reading of the marketplace and the changes in radio.
One fact about CBS Radio in the 1970s is telling. Its president for most of the decade was Sam Cook Digges. Even with all the management turmoil that the larger CBS corporation was going through as Bill Paley anointed, and then discarded, one potential successor after another, Digges kept his job and retired in 1981. I don't want to diminish Digges by saying this (he was a Mizzou grad, after all) but that fact may also be an indication that radio was far from central to CBS's business success by that time. You could say the same for NBC.
This also doesn't diminish the quality of work done by newspeople at those organizations. CBS and NBC still put out a product with strong journalistic quality and production values. They were class acts. During my time at KTRH, I dealt with CBS newsroom folks quite a bit. It was always a pleasure; they were professional and easy to work with.
There's something that journalists tend to have difficulty with, though: understanding the business imperatives that provide the money that make their endeavors possible. I know that, in my own journalism education, mentions of the business side of broadcasting happened occasionally ... and our department chair, a former CBS News correspondent, tried to provide some sense of realism about it ... but faculty members would usually focus exclusively on the journalism side of broadcasting. To be sure, that was much of their job, and that's what the students were there for, but some of the complexity and nuance of radio (and TV) news was something that would hit their students only after those students graduated and got their first jobs.
A longtime friend owned a station that was a CBS affiliate until 1986. It fit well with the station's beautiful music format. Relations with the network were excellent. But then came the need for a format change to something more contemporary, and CBS didn't fit any more, nor did it have an offering that would. "RadioRadio" (remember that?) came a couple of years later, but, by that time, the course had been set at that station, as at many others.
NBC radio disappered altogether. CBS radio became harder and harder to find, as full-service stations disappeared or morphed into talk outlets. CBS didn't have a talk-oriented offering. CBS hourly news could still fit with those stations, but the advantages of branding with other networks such as ABC or Fox became more important. (Aside: much as I detested Paul Harvey, his commentaries presaged the general lean of AM talk radio to the extreme right and probably still give ABC a perceptual advantage to this very day even if ABC News itself is more straight-ahead.)
There's one fact I can't get over when thinking about what happened to CBS News Radio. I live in the 18th largest radio market in the country. CBS was nowhere to be found, not even from distant signals in the daytime. It may not even have been available anywhere in the state of Colorado. There was once an affiliate in Durango, in the southwest corner, but I don't know what's happened there in recent years. iHeart is very dominant here for news and talk, unfortunately; Salem and Crawford are also in the talk-radio game. They weren't companies likely to run CBS affiliates, preferring more superficial choices. CBS News Radio was a top-notch product. Unfortunately, that wasn't enough. In the overall scheme of things, the amount of savings for CBS by eliminating CBS News Radio will be small. But that's not exactly a justification for keeping it going, either.
It also conveniently fit with the ideological project currently underway to put a leash on CBS's journalism, in more ways than the obvious one.
The last gasp for NBC Radio was TalkNet. Sally Jessie Raphael and Bruce Williams. NBC knew they had to offer more than TOH news to stay alive. They had Monitor and NIS. They knew they needed to have long form programming. They also knew they needed to get onto the growing area of FM rock radio. For that, they created The Source. That was the NBC version of ABC's FM Radio Network. They did news with a hip, young newscaster, who spoke in colloquial English. They also did concerts and music specials. They offered an FM simulcast of the Midnight Special.
But by 1988, the writing was on the wall. NBC's parent RCA was sold to GE. NBC Radio stations were sold to other buyers, and the network was sold to Westwood One. After about ten years, it was mostly indistinguishable from the other programming at that company. Not long after that, CBS entered into a management deal with Westwood One, and combined its radio network into that group that already owned NBC Radio. CBS News Radio was kept separate, but everything else was combined.
In 2008, Westwood One was in debt, and ultimately sold to Cumulus. They combined it with ABC Radio, that they inherited from Citadel. So from that point on, all of the heritage radio networks were combined under one banner. Then Disney restarted ABC Radio from scratch, and you see where we are today. A long sad story of how the radio networks became what they are today.
I just hooked up with a news network called Flash. They provide news fed on line in 60 sec and 2 min versions, sports in the same amounts and weather but the difference from everybody else is they do local stories! Apparently they search local sources within your area and create a local oriented newscast, sportscast and weather. I've had them on for about a week and am very happy with the localism they provide. the guy to talk to is Mike Sinnott at [email protected]. Tell him I sent you. Bob Ladd
GOW MEDIA |
5353 W. ALABAMA |
SUITE 415 |
HOUSTON, TX 77056 |
6/2/2026 10:26:52 AM |
Sounds like an AI scraper. AI voice as well? Do they have some arrangement with those “local sources”? Or are they harvesting without attribution?
Is Gow Media behind “Flash”? I’m in Houston, just curious.
It appears they rewrite from local safety and government departments which are required to allow all releases to be made public because those agencies are funded with tax dollars. It's a rule here in Florida. If the voice is AI I'm sure the public doesn't notice.